If there was going to be a live action Mobile Suit Gundam Live action movie. And they decided to make it a trilogy about Amuro and White base. What would each movie cover? Who would be the "Final Boss" from each movie?

"I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me"-Jesus Christ

Um, you're kind of starting describe the animated MSG movies. Besides, there will likely never be any kind of live-action Gundam project for a long time. As much as I'd like to see the Hi-Nu or the Heavyarms or the 00Qan[T] in glorious Transformers-level CGI, Sunrise got burned with G Saviour and it will likely be Gundam's 40th anniversary before they feel safe enough to try that experiment again.

I know it will never happen which is why I posted it in the fanfiction. The mgs animated trilogy would not work will in live action because they are long and boring. I think a movie starting in side 7 and ending with the ramba ral battle would be the first.

"I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me"-Jesus Christ

NastyNate wrote:The mgs animated trilogy would not work will in live action because they are long and boring. I think a movie starting in side 7 and ending with the ramba ral battle would be the first.

They're long and boring in your opinion, and I'm not sure most people would agree with it, given how the movies are generally viewed pretty positively.

Besdies, what you say is still basically the same as the first movie, which starts in Side 7 and ends with Amuro's first battle with Ramba Ral. I don't see how you could make major changes to the order already found in the trilogy and still tell the story as effectively as they do.

I think the movies would actually work pretty well if someone were to take every single shot of the animated trilogy and put it into live-action. Not perfect mind you, but hey, they made three transformers movies and those were honestly just a lot of stuff blowing up, so in comparision, why wouldn't the MSG movies work out in a live action format? Just get some attrative girls to "play" Frow Bow and Sayla and you have yourself a movie that will make billions...sadly...

I think I would even go a little bit further than just make them like the animated trilogys. I think it would work well to make amuro and sayla have more of a love story to make it more appealing to a western audience. It would start some riots but I think that if it where to be in movie form they should have some fun with it and change a little bit up.

"I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me"-Jesus Christ

why would anyone want to watch a whiny nerd have to get slapped around to fly his goofy giant robot out of the goofy spaceship in a goofy war against another bunch of goofy enemies with funny names in a goofy story that plays with goofy giant robots but thinks it's a serious war drama? (i mean come on, "Ramba Ral"? what, is that the next generation of Roomba or something?)

how would you propose somebody gets the rights to release a live-action simulacrum of Sunrise and Bandai's flagship property in a market that they think ultimately rejected it? including using all the trademarks, like the Gundam name and the character names and the setting and the mecha/ship/whatever else designs?

how would you write a movie that covers the Side 7 attack, the establishment of Amuro's rivalry with Char, the battles with Garma and Char's betrayal thereof, Amuro meeting his mom, Lieutenant Matilda, and the first bout with Ramba Ral, and packs in a superfluous love story between Amuro and Sayla, and is shorter than the animated one? what would you cut? how would you do that while still retaining the characterization and plot development of the original? how much stuff can you take out before you don't get to call it Gundam anymore?

how do you keep people from laughing at Char? (people will laugh at Char. nonnegotiable. the man wears a bucket on his head, and unlike Darth Vader, he doesn't really have a reason for it and his bucket isn't nearly as scary/awesome as Darth Vader's is anyway.)

how would you propose a movie as giant-robot-action-intensive as Gundam be handled without requiring a budget that would put some modern industrialized nations to shame? (case in point: eventually you'll have to show hangar shots of the entire Gundam and people interacting with it. which means you'll have to build at least one full-scale model of the Gundam and a set to house it. probably several. i wonder how much the full-scale Gundam statue in Japan cost? and that was only one and it didn't do anything.)

how would you convince people that your movie with brightly-colored giant robots piloted by nerdy psychic teenagers is actually a serious war drama with compelling characters and important themes, and not just kid's schlock?

and to bring us back full circle, if you're going and taking so many "liberties" with the original trilogy, why would even Gundam fans want to watch this?

EDIT: moved to Anime and Manga. Fanfiction wasn't really the forum for this.

Well, I am a girl, so when I was forced to see the Transformers movies with my brothers, I realized that the reason they made so much money was because they had really attriactive girls in it. I mean, women that were so attrative that they made me want to ripe them apart just out of pure unfairity (it is a word now. Deal.). Then I decided to tell myself that Megan Fox looks like a total bitch (which it turns out she is! ) and watched the rest of the schlock.

So Mr. ShadowCell, I guess my response to you is this. Put smoking hot girls in it and it will make money. Everything you just said, I can just say "attriative girl" and your arguement will fall apart, it is called the Bay Rule (it is going to be a thing).

I am glad you asked what the Bay Rule is! It is when you hide your terrible plot behind explosions, over-acting, and Foxy (get it?) ladies running in slow motion.

I want to say I was kidding, but after looking over what I wrote...hmmm...

Soma Taozi wrote:So Mr. ShadowCell, I guess my response to you is this. Put smoking hot girls in it and it will make money.

This is just way too simplistic. If it were always true, then Jennifer's Body and Jonah Hex, which both starred Megan Fox, wouldn't have been massive failures at the box office.

"What did catch my eye, however, was a podcast named Gundamn!. At first I thought it was a podcast about firearms and [rednecks] discussing their collection, but after looking at the episode titles I was sold." - Xhavalor

Hey all. I originally posted this in the less popular fanfic section to just get a small crowd of fans discussing what they think would be in a Gundam live action movie. Talking about what would they fit and what would they cut out and stuff. You know just for fun. I understand that this would never really work in a western world and probably won't. But neither will all those things that the Gundamn crew says sunrise should do to make it popular in the western world, it is just fun to talk about what we would like to see. So this is more of a candy land scenario. Not a flame war of whether or not it actually would work in a western world. Just a fanfic.

"I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me"-Jesus Christ

It is impossible to make a live action Gundam movie that covers everything essential to the original story without either splitting it into multiple movies or make it three-sum hours long. The only thing to do is minimize the humans in it. Case in point the Transformers trilogy: Literally all the flack these movies get revolve around unlikeable humans and I have yet to encounter one person that would not rather have them removed entirely. How do you sell movies like this and make audiences entertained? The fighting of course, they have it in the trailers and posters and that is what most people go to see. Putting too many human scenes into a Gundam movie was attempted and the result was G-Saviour. Remember that human characters are always a penny a dozen, most franchises only get a shot to fame once.

I would definitely say in the first movie they could cut out the scene with amuro and his mom. Also take out the garma saga part. So basically have Amuro gets gundam, escape side, maybe luna 2 stuff, re enter atmosphere, and then first battle with ramba ral. The end.

"I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me"-Jesus Christ

So you remove the demonstration of Char's motivation for being in Zeon, the introduction to backstory, one of the only really memorable things he does in Mobile Suit Gundam, Sayla's backstory by extension, and the galvanizing event for Zeon that leads to the "Sieg Zeon" battle cry; and you remove probably the best opportunity the first movie provides to make Amuro out to be something other than a whiny nerd or an angry press-ganged kid, by showing that even at this early stage, he can't go back to his mother and he's a changed person who takes his job seriously enough to leave behind his hometown and his mom.

And this is all after the animated movie cut out a ton of stuff from the TV show, like the Luna II battles and Big John and the whole Gundam bomb plot thing.

Great! Why not take out the Gundam too? Or the White Base, or Bright, or Zeon?

I think Shadowcell has a point, you can't take out too much of the characters in favor of MS battles. Wasn't the interaction of the characters and the civilians trying to get used to being the crew of a warship one of the things that set Gundam apart from the super robot shows of the late 70s?

Well if there if ever a live action mobile suit gundam I would want it to start out like the novel Mobile Suit Gundam Awakening, Escalation, Confrontation. Like have Amuro as a cadet or already in the efsf going to pick up the Gundams. It would be good to mix up have some things that happened in the novel, with some things from the anime, and some things that happened in Origin(and maybe some new stuff). I actually think some of the character interactions and development need to be kept in but not all of it. I would like more of an alternate telling of the story. Also I wouldn't have Amuro meet his mom until it's all over (like a kick in the nuts after all the action his over).

DuelGundam2099 wrote:Putting too many human scenes into a Gundam movie was attempted and the result was G-Saviour. Remember that human characters are always a penny a dozen, most franchises only get a shot to fame once.

In my opinion the reason why Gundam is so good is mainly for the characters. Characters that are introduced have their own story as to why they are fighting in this terrible war. They also show that not everyone in each army is a good/bad guy. Gundam is an anime war drama showing the struggles of these young people trying to survive.

As for G-Savior the reason why I think it wasn't very successfull is because it doesn't look or feel like anything Gundam related until the very end. The motives of the characters and the characters themselfs are very boring and not interesting (The acting itself doesnt seem too good either). The MS battle at the end was interesting at first but even then it was waaaay too slow compared to every other Gundam show which has had fast pace battles since the very beginning. The whole movie just feels like a low budget Sci-Fi film (They even re-used the cool looking Starship Troopers uniforms).

G-Savior had alot of potential but failed. Whenever I think of live action Gundam I think of this...

NastyNate wrote:I would definitely say in the first movie they could cut out the scene with amuro and his mom. Also take out the garma saga part. So basically have Amuro gets gundam, escape side, maybe luna 2 stuff, re enter atmosphere, and then first battle with ramba ral. The end.

I don't agree with that. For a live action Gundam to be successful in the west, it needs to be a retelling or reimagining of the original story, not a copy of the trilogy with some stuff cut out. The movie trilogy would be really confusing for anyone who has not seen MSG to understand, hence why a reimagining is necessary. The first half of the movie could be about their struggles to return to Earth, and the second part about Garma. Garma's part can't be cut out as he is a member of the Zabi family (the main antagonists) and for the reasons Shadowcell stated. He would be the main villain of the film, leading to his defeat by Amuro instead of the way he died in MSG (Char betraying would still be a factor). The movie ends with Bright leading the White Base to Jaburo, while a new enemy is introduced to tackle the Gundam, Ramba Ral.

I think it would flow better that way instead of trying to jam a whole bunch of stuff that most people would not understand, and would flow much better. Of course, all of that relies heavily heavily on one thing, MSG's popularity. It would need to have a strong following to have any sort of success. But then again, any form of success would be marginal at best.

The reason why Star Trek, Star Wars and most recently, Transformers, can make hundreds of millions in the west is because those franchises have been ingrained in American culture. Like Gundam, they would also be seen as nerdy, but popular, if not culturally, nerdy. It's been a little over ten years since Wing debuted, and the lack of success Gundam has had since then is telling.

Origin could help change some minds, but only for the young crowd. Adults just won't care. The best bet at making a live action Gundam movie successful would be if one was released following Gundam Wing's run, but even then, such success would be limited.

On an obscure historical note, there was actually interest in producing a live-action Gundam movie for Western audiences---way back in 1983.

Portion of an interview with Syd Mead wrote:6. Around 1983 you worked on an American film design project based on an anime property that was eventually aborted for legal reasons. This was a film for Lions Gate based on adapting the mobile suit Gundam mecha for domestic audience film style. Can you tell us more on this project? Did you ever complete your original designs for Gundam?

No. I worked first on the ZAK character because for whatever reason, the director thought that would be more mechanically interesting as a demo. The character of GUNDAM was started after I drafted the ZAK character for computer vector plotting and modeling. (The computer being used at the time was a supercomputer CRAY.)

Lion’s Gate had failed to get license approval from Sunrise! The Sunrise New York office sent a cease and desist court order and the project was shelved, never to be resurrected. My job was to first, draft the ZAK character for plot input, and then I started on ‘de-kabuki-izng’ the GUNDAM character for the American market. I finished the head first, and was starting on the body when the project was discontinued.

On a related note, Syd Mead also made a few Gundam illustrations based on several scenes from the original series (Zakus invading Side 7, Battle of A Baoa Ku). These illustrations should not be confused with the one most commonly seen, of the Mk-II with its left arm pointing towards the viewer, as this was actually commissioned as a poster for Newtype Magazine and was in no way related to the live-action project.